‘Doesn’t have teeth’ — experts voice concern about deferral of ‘key’ clauses in Climate Change Act

18 Mar 2025

The Climate Change Act, South Africa’s most comprehensive legislative framework for climate action, has come into operation but certain significant sections of the Act were deferred in the President’s proclamation on Monday.

South Africa marked the commencement of the country’s most comprehensive legislative framework for climate action to date, with President Cyril Ramaphosa officially proclaiming the Climate Change Act, 2024 (Act No 22 of 2024) in the Government Gazette on Monday.

The Act is a statutory framework for climate adaptation and mitigation, indicating how the country as a whole (across departments, municipalities, provinces and the private sector) will be moving to tackle climate change and transition towards a more sustainable, low-carbon economy.

This piece of legislation has been described as sorely needed as the country faces increasing weather and climate-related disasters.

Read more: SA in the throes of a sodden summer, marked by widespread flooding and infrastructure damage

Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Minister Dion George said on Monday the Act was a critical milestone reflecting the government’s commitment to achieve a just transition to a low-carbon economy.

However, significant sections of the Act were deferred, with their commencement moved to a later date.

George said the reason for this was that the department was developing a set of regulations that would enable their implementation.

“Some of the draft regulations are at an advanced stage of development and will be gazetted for public input and comment soon,” he said.

These include:

The listing of the Presidential Climate Commission as an independent and impartial legal entity under the Public Finance Management Act is delayed but George said this is at an advanced stage;

Provincial and municipal planning concerning climate change response and financial mechanisms – delayed until the National Adaptation Strategy and Plan has been finalised;

National adaptation objectives and strategies will only be implemented once the National Adaptation Strategy and Plan is completed;

GHG Emission Reductions and Carbon Budgets require further groundwork, including consultations, public participation and the development of regulations before being enforced; and

The regulatory framework relating to carbon budgets and synthetic greenhouse gas phase-outs will only be operational once comprehensive regulations are developed.

Brandon Abdinor, acting head of the Pollution and Climate Change Programme at the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), told Daily Maverick they were happy with the progression of the Act but were concerned about the deferred clauses that delay key mechanisms.

“We need this legislation for a number of reasons, for our climate change response, and to see that it’s progressed is gratifying… We’re concerned about the clauses that have been deferred because they are still going to mean a delay in some of the key mechanisms in the Act,” said Abdinor.

James Reeler, senior manager on climate action at WWF South Africa, also had had reservations about what has been promulgated, but said they were “delighted that it’s finally taking place” after almost a decade of development since the National Climate Change Response White Paper.

“It’s been a long time coming. South Africa desperately needs this for alignment of policy, to take climate change into account across government and in terms of our developmental goals,” said Reeler.

The Act and the impacts of the deferred sections

Daily Maverick previously reported that the most important aspects the Act would address in the country’s domestic response to climate change are mandating carbon budgets, setting the obligations of provinces and municipalities, the development of the National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy within two years of the Act coming out, making the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC) a statutory body, setting sectoral emissions targets and enabling public scrutiny.

The deferred sections refer in large part to these.

They include essentially all of the national adaptation planning, the carbon budgets and the phases-out of synthetic greenhouse gases (GHGs), as well as the quantification of GHG goals for the sectoral emission targets – although those targets are going ahead without those quantitative goals.

Reeler said: “All of those are key. So there’s essentially a whole body of the key mitigation action, and obviously all of the adaptation action.”

He said they understand the rationale for some of these being deferred but regarding, for instance, section 19, which talks about the national adaptation strategy and plan, “there’s no reason not to sign that into law now”.

These provisions deal with the national adaptation to impacts of climate change including the adaptation objectives, scenarios, National Adaptation Strategy and Plan and sector adaptation strategy and plan.

The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment said these provisions will be brought into operation once the National Adaptation Strategy and Plan is finalised.

“What we have at the moment, what has been signed into place is, I would call it a scaffolding… It doesn’t have teeth, and it doesn’t have any finance mechanism in place,” said Reeler.

Reeler said there would be two years for the National Adaptation strategy and plan, and then another year for the municipalities to come up with how they align with that. “That sort of three-year runway… There’s no reason in principle not to assign that.”

The idea of the Climate Change Act is that these are things that line ministries need to do so they can achieve their own goals.

Reeler said that if line ministries were not thinking about adaptation, planning for it or integrating mitigation in their ongoing processes, then a lot of what the government hoped to achieve would be undermined in the medium to long term because of the impact of climate change.

The big impact in the near term will be the sectoral emission targets and the carbon budgets, and Reeler and Abdinor said the country needed to formalise the regulations for that.

“We [WWF] completely agree that you can’t have the budgets without the regulations, and so we need those regulations to be finalised… Those are really going to make a difference to how we do lots of our development,” said Reeler.

The next steps and challenges

The announcement that the Bill had been gazetted is without a doubt a major milestone, but there are still challenges expected in the next steps, and the major one is the financing mechanism.

Reeler said: “This is a money bill, and one of the early pushbacks that came to it from Parliament was that it hadn’t adequately mapped out what the cost of this will be.”

But he said the large point was that these costs were real and had to be borne either way, so the first thing was to make sure that the mitigation plans were done and then cost those.

“That’s going to be the challenging discussion within government,” said Reeler.

From the state side, Abdinor said they now needed to continue working on all the outstanding legislation.

Some of the big ones are the regulations for carbon budgets, and in fact all of the mitigation measures, and listing the GHG activities.

The government is busy with carbon budget regulations, and the CER and WWF are taking part in some of those consultations.

“The sooner they can be put in place, the better,” said Abdinor. There is also work on the sectoral emissions targets, with a draft set of targets that was released in 2024.

Regarding the carbon budget being delayed, “this is very disappointing, because that was one of the signals that South Africa needs to help drive decarbonisation… The longer we delay on the implementation of these budget regulations, the more [we’re] perpetuating that risk of failure to decarbonise, and consequently a lot of the additional economic impact for that failure of delaying and of not supporting the process,” said Reeler.

This was where Reeler said we need to see quick action from the government and concerted planning.

Abdinor added that the Act also made everything contingent on the National Adaptation Strategy and Plan.

“The way we’re reading the deferrals is that once those are in place, then they can put in place the adaptation objectives exercise, the adaptation scenarios exercise, and also the Climate Change Response Plans by provinces and municipalities.”

He said this felt a bit like putting the “cart before the horse” because the definition of the adaptation strategy and plan states that it needs to take into account the objectives and scenarios.

“The problem is [that] the publication of the national adaptation strategy and planning sets a whole lot of timeframes in motion. For example, the sector adaptation plans and the provincial and municipal response plans.”

Now, those timeframes don’t start running until the national plan is published.

Thus, Abdinor said that if the National Adaptation Strategy and Plan should drag out for any reason, we would see critical adaptation obligations not coming into being – which was a concern, given that climate change impacts are intensifying. DM

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The Act and the impacts of the deferred sections

The next steps and challenges